NASA’s Big Data Climate Change Model

When both NASA and the Pope are speaking out about climate change, you know something is up. Yesterday the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) unveiled a public data set showing how rainfall, temperature and CO2 levels will change over the next 85 years.

The high-resolution data, which is as granular as looking at individual towns changing on a daily basis, will help scientists predict catastrophic environmental events such as floods and draughts. These insights will be particularly valuable to the agricultural industry, where it will help to optimize crop yield and prevent losses.

“NASA is in the business of taking what we’ve learned about our planet from space and creating new products that help us all safeguard our future,” said Ellen Stofan, NASA chief scientist. “With this new global dataset, people around the world have a valuable new tool to use in planning how to cope with a warming planet.”

This NASA dataset integrates actual measurements from around the world with data from climate simulations created by the international Fifth Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. These climate simulations used the best physical models of the climate system available to provide forecasts of what the global climate might look like under two different greenhouse gas emissions scenarios: a “business as usual” scenario based on current trends and an “extreme case” with a significant increase in emissions.

Additional information about the new NASA climate projection dataset is available at: